Perfusionists

Throughout this period Maas spoke with the nurses and anaesthetists about their concerns. He said that after the Ulimaumi case, Swartz, McNeill, Youngson and Hinam were quite critical of Odim. In particular, they were concerned about cannulation and blood loss. Maas said the perfusionists sought to remain neutral, saying that "it takes time to learn someone's techniques, someone's abilities, and I don't believe that it's fair in one or two cases, particularly ones where some of these cases were as difficult as they were, to judge them. At least I am not capable to do that." (Evidence, page 6,983) Maas also said that after a number of the early cases, Youngson asked him to stand at the head of the table and observe Odim's cannulation style. Maas said:

There seemed to have been more blood loss than we would have anticipated during cannulation, and that indicated that they were losing obviously blood during the venous cannulation in particular; and we were told by the nursing staff that he quite often cut some sutures, which were replaced and retightened. (Evidence, page 6,727)